Alastair Cook was named captain of
England’s one-day cricket team and Stuart Broad took over as
Twenty20 skipper in a revamped leadership structure for the
national squad.

Andrew Strauss, who led England to its first Ashes series
win in Australia in 24 years in December, will stay on as
captain of the Test team after deciding to quit one-day
internationals to concentrate on elite five-day cricket.

The promotions of opening batsman Cook, Strauss’s Test
vice-captain, and all-rounder Broad come two days after England
team director Andy Flower renewed his contract. It’s the first
time England has had different full-time captain across the
game’s three formats.

“It has never been tried before so I am excited by the
opportunity it provides us with,” Flower said at a news
conference in London. “We don’t know 100 percent whether it
will work and be the most efficient system but we’re going to
give it a try.”

The shake-up comes a month after the four-yearly World Cup,
where England reached the quarterfinals before slumping to
eventual finalist Sri Lanka by 10 wickets.

“The end of the World Cup was a watershed for all teams,
not just England, and it’s time to refresh, regenerate and move
forward,” Strauss said. “I’m extremely proud of the strides
we’ve made in limited-overs cricket over the past two years. In
my mind, me starting the process toward the next World Cup and
not seeing it through was not in the best interests of the
team.”

Determination

He said he still had “a huge amount of drive and
determination” to take the Test team forward, and retiring from
one-day cricket would enable him to focus on the five-day
captaincy as third-ranked England seeks the top spot.

Cook, 26, wasn’t selected for England’s 2011 World Cup
squad even after racking up 766 runs in the Ashes victory in
Australia. He stood in as one-day captain for Strauss 14 months
ago in Bangladesh, where he led the team to a 3-0 win in the
one-day series and 2-0 sweep of the Tests.

“It is a huge honor and privilege and I’m excited by the
challenge,” Cook said. “I’m quite inexperienced as a captain
but that gives me a huge potential to learn. I know Andy Flower
from Essex, and we started something in Bangladesh as captain
and coach and I look forward to that continuing.”

Collingwood Replaced

Broad, 24, replaces 34-year-old Paul Collingwood, who led
England to the World Twenty20 title last year.

“There is not a huge amount of T20 cricket until the World
Cup but I’m hugely excited to be leading a talented group of
players,” Broad said. “This is my first captaincy role but
I’ve played under talented captains and learned from every
one.”

Since Flower took the team director post on a permanent
basis in 2009, England has risen to third from sixth in the
International Cricket Council Test rankings and gone up one
place to fifth in the one-day game. In 2009, he and Strauss
helped England defeat Australia 2-1 to regain the Ashes before
retaining the trophy with a 3-1 victory in 2010-11.

Flower said Cook and Broad will benefit from working
alongside Strauss.

“These two young captains will learn a lot from him,”
Flower said. “I think they’re lucky to have him as a sounding-
board. This could be the most effective use of our resources.
Over the next few years we will see if that works or not.”